


let me live

by fitzefitcher



Series: I'm going to save all the Legion NPCs and no one can stop me [4]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Rescue, Team as Family, sort of, the illidari are sort of dipshits someone needs to watch out for these idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 08:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10987497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzefitcher/pseuds/fitzefitcher
Summary: “Do you know how many times I’ve told these assholes not to do this?” Bear hisses at her hysterically. “Do you know how many times we’ve had to get help from some wandering adventurer who just happened by, just because they don’t know how to not rush headlong into death?”The Black Rook Hold questline, only all the illidari are rescued, instead of just one.





	let me live

**Author's Note:**

> title from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwMwtAFw2LE
> 
> it's generally how I feel about blizzard insisting on giving all these NPCs shitty game of thrones-y deaths.

“This- This is an embarrassment. This is a god damn embarrassment,” the slayer says. She appears to be attempting to run her hands through her own hair, perhaps to calm herself, but it’s not going very well; it looks closer to tearing it out.

The paladin, overseeing her fellow illidari’s wounds, frowns.

“Come on, Bear, it’s not that bad,” she assures her, and is treated to Bear whirling around to face her, green eyes wild and long, pale hair falling out of its bun. Her veil had met its maker about an hour earlier at the hands of a pissed off highborne banshee. The banshee met hers at the hands of Bear, shortly after. Or, claws, rather. Bear’s truest form didn’t have hands so much as claws, as Jahdiel came to learn.

_“Do you know how many times I’ve told these assholes not to do this?”_ Bear hisses at her hysterically. “Do you know how many _times_ we’ve had to get help from some wandering adventurer who just _happened_ by, just because they don’t know how to _not_ rush headlong into death?”

Jahdiel opens her mouth, but upon reflecting on it another moment, wisely closes it again. She’s worked alongside the illidari long enough to know of their… admittedly misguided, somewhat suicidal tendencies. It’s how they found Arduen, actually, crumpled in a heap just outside Black Rook’s prison. It was incredibly, incredibly lucky that they found him just before he bit the dust. It’s probably how they’re going to find the rest of his team, too.

“Don’t misunderstand me, I _appreciate_ what Lord Illidan has done for us,” she continues, gritting her teeth with a force that by no means belies the opposite. “But I don’t appreciate what he taught us.”

“What did he teach you?” Jahdiel asks before she can stop herself. Bear barks out a short laugh, bitter and still hysterical.

“Oh nothing, just that self-preservation is a lie made up by cowards who aren’t dedicated enough to ‘the cause,’ and giving your teammates help makes both of you weak,” she explains, and it’d be almost casual if she wasn’t currently wide-eyed and manic and gesticulating violently. “I had to convince them that not taking in more fel magic while you were hurt didn’t make you weak or feeble. Kayn almost killed someone because he tried to force them to take in more while they were injured. Do you know how _insane_ that is, that I have to tell them this on a near-daily basis?” She paces, grumbling something that sounds suspiciously like “I never should have followed Kael’thas into that portal.”

“Fionnabhair,” the paladin says, gently. Bear groans loudly.

“I couldn’t just be satisfied with going to the knight’s academy with my girlfriend, _no_ , I had to become one of the _royal guard_ so I could protect the prince and then follow that traitor into that light-damned portal,” she rants. Jahdiel grabs her hand as she passes again, stopping her pacing.

“You came back, didn’t you?” she points out, smiling demurely. She presses a kiss to her knuckle. Bear sighs.

“Honestly, it’s still a mystery to me how you could’ve waited for me for that long,” she tells her, allowing herself to be tugged down next to her. She returns the favor, pressing a kiss onto Jahdiel’s fingers.

“I knew you’d come back,” Jahdiel says, like it’s as simple a fact as the sky being blue or Illidan Stormrage being a pretentious asshole. “Just like I know we’re going to find your friends, and you’re going to save them.”

“Ugh,” Bear says, rolling her eyes. “UGH.”

“It’s why we picked you to lead in Lord Illidan’s stead,” Arduen says, apparently having the audacity to wake from unconsciousness for the sole purpose of taking Jahdiel’s side.

“They’re more like my coworkers,” Bear grumbles. “ _Someone_ has to take care of you dumb shits.”

“You care about them,” Jahdiel says.

“You care about us,” Arduen says.

“Fuck off,” Bear says, her ears definitely, absolutely not burning. “Fuck you, Arduen, I see you smiling. Should’ve left you in the goddamn dirt where you belong.”

“But you didn’t,” he says, smartass.

“UGH,” Bear says.

\---

Sirius is curled up on the ground, turned away from them and facing his cell wall.

_“Motherfucker, you better not be dead,”_ Bear says with intent. Jahdiel watches as Arduen gets a funny sort of look on his face, like something very bad was about to happen and he couldn’t decide if he should be excited or nervous. Jahdiel elects to go with nervous, herself.

Sirius weakly pulls himself up, leaning heavily against the wall. He begins shivering uncontrollably.

“My blood... it _burns_ ,” he mumbles. “The fel energy... I can't.... control it...” He shudders violently and screams, and in the time it takes him to shapeshift, slow and painful in the wake of his trying to fight it, Bear has already shifted, legs folding into something digitigrade, limbs lengthened into spindly, narrow stilts, toes and fingers long and sharp and a whip of a tail trailing behind. Spines line her back, growing with loud cracks and pops as her bones adjust to this form. White hair loose and wild, green eyes glittering with fury, she is a great and terrible beauty to behold.

Sirius lunges at them, but Fionnabhair is faster, grabbing him by the neck and slamming him into the ground. She roars at his face, and he quails, the sound vibrating off the walls. Her teeth, as it turns out, are alarmingly large. _How does her mouth even fit that many._

“Mom’s mad,” Arduen says, like it’s not obvious. The odd, anxious grin on his face lingers from before. She didn’t know giddy terror was an emotion one could experience. Jahdiel _understands_ , now.

“Mom’s mad,” she agrees weakly.

\---

Cassiel is still in the process of being tortured by the dreadlord fuckhead who started this entire debacle in the first place when they find him.

Said fuckhead, upon realizing their arrival, attempts to monologue something about the legion dominating you wretched mortals, the usual spiel about scorching Azeroth into dust. It doesn’t go that well; he’s maybe five words in before Bear is on him and he’s screaming.

Arduen and Jahdiel rush to get Cassiel down from the wall he’s chained to, helping him to his feet. Unfortunately, he’s too weak to stand, nearly falling to the ground before Arduen catches him and has to carry him. He’s shaking like a leaf, and his wounds, predictably, are horrible and bloody but just short of enough to kill him, because then that would mean that he couldn’t continue to be tortured.

The dreadlord’s shrieks (and blood) fill the air, and Jahdiel thinks, _Good_.

\---

“We found the dreadlord,” Bear says. She sounds like she gargles tar and gravel for fun. Her hair is darker and redder than Jahdiel’s now, and so are her teeth and claws, coincidentally.

_“Merciful Elune, you did,”_ Asha says, reverent and fearful.

\---

“Thank you for releasing them, Warden,” Jahdiel says, afterwards.

“We didn’t really have much of a choice,” Maiev mutters, watching Bear prowl the perimeter while her brother helped patch up her misbegotten wards. “It was the lesser of the two evils.”

“Still,” she says. “You got me my girlfriend back.”

Maiev looks at her and Jahdiel can literally see years being shaved off her life from the exhaustion directed at that statement. She smiles sweetly at her.

“Thanks,” she says again.


End file.
